Jesus Meets His First Disciples - Part 4

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Jesus Meets His First Disciples - Part 4

 

One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon

Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, " We

have found the Messiah, " which is, being interpreted, the Christ.

 

And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, " Thou art Simon

the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, " which is by interpretation, a

stone.

 

The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and

saith unto him, " Follow me. "

 

- John 1:40-43

 

 

Jesus' disciples recognize

him as the Messiah, incarnation

of Christ Consciousness

 

(p.187) In the words of Andrew we find the differentiation between the name

Jesus and the title Christ (Messiah). Jesus ( " Isa, " Lord of Creation)[1] was his

given family name, signifying a divine child. The title Christ was appended

later when he began his ministry and was recognized as the one whose coming had

been prophesied, in whom Divinity would be incarnate. Thus Christ signifies the

Christ Consciousness, the reflection of God which became manifest in the

consciousness of Jesus.

 

The concept of Christ as a state of consciousness, as well as linguistic

variants of the world itself, is very ancient, referring to the unchangeable

Intelligence, the pure Reflected Consciousness of God, present in every atom of

matter and every pore of finite creation--the Christ Consciousness, known from

time immemorial by India's 'rishis' as 'Kutastha Chaitanya'.

 

Jesus the Christ signifies that the body of Jesus was the vehicle in which was

manifested the Christ Consciousness. The title 'Christ' is more anciently found

in India in the word 'Krishna'. Perhaps the Christ title was first bestowed on

Jesus during his sojourn in India. Sometimes I purposely spell 'Krishna' as

'Christna' to show the correlation. Similarly, 'Yadava' was the family name of

the beloved Hindu avatar who lived in India centuries before Jesus, [2] and

'Krishna' ('Christna') was his spiritual epithet. (p.188) Thus, the words

'Christ' and 'Krishna' are the spiritual titles for these two illumined beings:

Jesus Christ and Yadava Krishna. [3]

 

People throughout different ages have sought the Messiah, many believing he

would be a temporal king who would reign in a golden age of opulence and

well-being, free from travesties of suffering and oppression. [4] Few were to

understand that the purpose of a Messiah, a Christ, would be to turn their

soul's attention from the consciousness of attachment to little portions of

matter-world--country, society, family, possessions--to the omnipresence of

Christ Consciousness. When souls, descending into form to experience the Lord's

cosmic drama of 'maya'-creation, lose their identification with the universality

of Christ Consciousness, they are diminished into limited egos entangled in

mortal relationships, circumscriptions, and national and social identities.

Blind attachments lead to selfishness, quarrelsomeness, delusion of permanent

possession, inharmony, worries; and on a national scale produce commercial

greed, desire of wresting the possessions of others, and terrible wars.

 

After accumulating a bewildering collage of adventurous and often painful

incarnations, the beleagured soul cries, " Enough! " and a serious search for

emancipation begins.

 

One has to wonder how our Creator must feel that most of His truant children

turn to Him only when in desperation, after being impelled by the scourge of

sorrow. Nevertheless, whether through suffering, or wonderment, or

discriminative reasoning, when they do begin to long for God and deliverance,

and pray deeply to Him, God is touched and responds with loving help. (p.189)

The Heavenly Father, who is ever watchful of the inclination of the human heart,

favors the truth-seeking devotee with some form of assistance, commensurate with

the depth of the supplicant's desire and readiness.

 

Finding a true guru: a

God-sent guide on the

path to Self-realization

 

During the period of a seeker's philosophical curiosity, God causes a seemingly

chance contact with the precepts of a good book or the counsel of some spiritual

teacher. But when the aspirant is not satisfied with meager placations from

religious treatises or mediocre instructors, and his heart is corroding with

eagerness to find God, then the Father sends unto His child one who knows God

and is empowered to confer that realization on others. God does not reveal

Himself in the beginning to an undeveloped truth-seeker, emerging from haloed

clouds to proffer blessings and wisdom; He uses the transparent intuition,

God-consciousness, and teachings of a master, an enlightened soul, to bring the

devotee unto Himself. The guru is therefore not an ordinary teacher, but a

preceptor-messenger celestial who guides the devotee through wisdom and reason,

and the discipline of spiritual practices, 'sadhana', throughout one life, or as

many lives as necessary, until the soul is again free in Spirit.

 

The whims of fickleness and the mental excitement of love of the new are real

deterrents on the spiritual path. Sampling one church after another, one teacher

after another, collecting an incompatible hash of ideas, is a sure formula for

developing theoretical indigestion. The way to wisdom lies in assimilating

truths into one's own personal realization, not in the amassing of concepts left

untried and unproven. The method of finding God is different from the methods of

gathering knowledge and storing it in the brain employed by universities to

educate specialists in any field. Even so, a medical student, for example, will

never learn his specialty if he roams willy-nilly from subject to subject,

switching from one medical institution to another and listening to a few

lectures at each, but not going through intensive training in the necessary

courses in an effectively integrated program to earn a degree. The serious

spiritual aspirant, also, needs to commit himself to the time and lessons

necessary for Self-realization, to the practice of those proven methods that

have produced God-knowing saints.

 

There are many worthy teachers who selflessly serve and help others; but there

is also much scope for unscrupulous abuse by those who would take advantage of

the emotional vulnerability of persons who in seeking support from religion

become blindly attached, all hide-bound, to a teacher's personality and

self-conceived assertions. (p.190) In my early years of seeking God, not a few

such pseudo-gurus tried to impress me with grandiose displays of piety and

scriptural verbosity; but there was no godliness in their

do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do facade and in the hollowness of holy words that they

rolled out from rote rather than from the resonance of realization.

 

It is good to discriminate between the so-called teacher--who uses religion as a

livelihood or to make money, or to gain fame and following--and the genuine

teacher, who uses his religion (and principled business methods in religion)

solely to serve his brethren with real spirituality. Discretion and caution are

particularly necessary in accepting a guru, one to whom explicit loyalty and

trust are given.

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 8, pg. 187-190

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] See Discourse 5.

 

[2] The date of Sri Krishna's incarnation is uncertain. Though archaeologically

indefinite, a popular concept is that he lived sometime between 1500 and 900

B.C.

 

[3] There are many derivations given to the word 'Krishna', the most common of

which is " dark, " referring to the hue of Krishna's complexion. (He is often

shown as dark blue to connote divinity. Blue is also the color of the Christ

Consciousness when epitomized in the spiritual eye as a circle of opal-blue

light surrounding the star-opening to Cosmic Consciousness.) According to M.V.

Sridatta Sarma ( " On the Advent of Sri Krishna " ), of the various other meanings

given to the word 'Krishna', several are found in the 'Brahmavaivarta Purana'.

He states that according to one of these derivations, " 'Krsna' means the

Universal Spirit. 'Krsi' denotes a generic term, while 'na' conveys the idea of

the self, thus bringing forth the meaning 'Omniscient Spirit.' " In this we find

a parallel to the Christ Consciousness as the Intelligence of God omnipresent in

creation, the 'Kutastha Chaitanya'. It is of interest that a colloquial Bengali

rendering of 'Krishna' is 'Krista' (cf. Greek 'Christos' and Spanish 'Cristo'.)

('Publisher's Note')

 

[4] The word " Messiah " comes from the Hebrew 'Mashiakh', " Anointed, " the

expected King and deliverer of the Hebrews. Translated into Greek, " anointed "

became 'Christos', " Christ. "